Musings on the Path

I’ve been playing guitar off and on since the 70s. I’ve learned enough to play electric blues and blues/rock at the amateur intermediate level, but I’ve had no success improvising beyond mixing various rhythm guitar riffs.

Recently I’ve realized I can improvise in my cooking, taking the spices from one dish with some additional spices or herbs with a different protein and a different cooking method. Then I add whatever vegetables are on hand that fit. I routinely roll cut (a Chinese technique, see Simply Ming: Roll Cutting Technique) the carrots and zucchinis in stews and sautes of European roots.

All my poems are improvisation.

With music, it’s easy to point at wrong notes. Other than bent notes, there is no close enough to get by. With daily cooking, off perfect a little is generally still quite good. My distinction between peasant cooking and high cuisine it that peasant cooking is quite tolerant of slight or even moderate changes (most ingredients can easily cut in half or doubled). High cuisine is frequently pushed to the point of breaking so off by a bit often breaks badly.

Maybe it’s perfectionism not ability that stands in my way.

How (And Why) to Create an Author Mission Statement is a guest column on the Writer Unboxed blog. It’s a five step process to getting clear about the goal of your writing:

• What you write (e.g., poems, essays, novels)?
• Who you write for (e.g., children, young adults)?
• Why you write (e.g., money, fame)?
• Put it together (combine the the answers).
• Put it to work.

My mission is writing free-verse poetry for a fairly literate crowd (not necessarily literate about poetry) to show alternative views, viewpoints, and understandings. Getting paid is nice, but is not the point. Fame may be embarrassing or counter-productive (see The Art of Disappearing by Naomi Shihab Nye). Getting published where many people will read my work and are likely to get what I’m trying to get across (i.e., with open minds) is the point.